SWEAT AND GUILT

by Matthew Thomas Bernell

On a day so hot I drove by horses
loafing on the ground and truly

believed one bright gold palomino
lay dead in the red dirt, I

selfishly kept going. It was June. There was
somewhere I needed to be. That night

the horse came back in a dream
as my therapist. Round

glasses, cross-legged, demure.
It leaned in to ask Have you

held space lately for feeling your feelings
without judgment? Then it chomped

a chunk from a big red apple. I hesitated
and sighed, No, but I want to,

or at least, I want to want to and recoiled,
awakening, as if pierced by fangs of cold

sweat and guilt. Are dreams, as McCarthy
once suggested, really gifts from the parts of

ourselves that cannot speak? When I drive
past the pasture again, the horse

is still there, head deep in a black trough,
tail swinging loosely, alive.

Matthew Thomas Bernell is an emerging writer from somewhere near the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Cream City Review, Chestnut Review, Gulf Coast, trampset, and elsewhere. Recently, he has been working on a chapbook while pursuing his MFA at Warren Wilson's Program for Writers. You can find him on Twitter @ImmanentFlux.